What secrets can you learn from the sticker on vegetables and fruits
'28.03.2021'
Source: Tip hero
You've probably noticed that you can often see small stickers on fruits and vegetables in the store. This is not just a label “for beauty”, but a source of valuable information.
The data shown on the labels is important not only to sellers, whom they probably already dream of at night. The buyer will also be curious to find out what the bright sticker on the apple, zucchini or banana tells, Tip hero.
The stickers usually have a bar code for scanning and a PLU code to identify the price and product category. But it allows you to learn something else: how this product was grown. By reading this code correctly, you can determine whether your food has been genetically modified, whether the fruit or vegetable has been grown organically or using chemical fertilizers, fungicides, or herbicides.
Here are the basic rules that you need to know to understand:
- If the PLU code is only four digitsThis means that the products were grown “traditionally” - that is, with the use of pesticides. The last four characters (or just four, in this case) simply indicate what type of vegetable or fruit you are buying. For example, bananas are labeled 4011.
- If the code five digits and the first one is "8", this suggests that before you genetically modified fruit or vegetable. In fact, they were created in the laboratory or developed for decades during the artificial selection and do not exist in nature in this form. A genetically modified banana will be labeled with the 84011 code.
- If the code consists of five digits and starts with “9”This means that the products were grown organically and not related to genetically modified. In this case, the banana is organically labeled with the code 94011.
By the way, the adhesive coating by which the sticker is attached to the surface of the product is safe for health and food consumption, but of course the stickers themselves are not worth it.
